The Hindu : Sport / Asian Games : Warm welcome for Indian contingent

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Friday, Apr 09, 2004

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Sport - Asian Games

Warm welcome for Indian contingent

By Our Sports Reporter

NEW DELHI, APRIL 8. With a haul of 101 gold medals, the Indian contingent to the South Asian Federation (SAF) Games returned here to a rousing welcome, but the modest performance of its athletes and boxers has surely left a scar on India's feat in Islamabad.

"But for the athletes and boxers, our performance in the SAF Games was excellent,'' Chef de Mission of Indian SAF contingent, Baljit Sigh Sethi, told The Hindu on arrival here on Thursday.

"I don't know why our athletes failed to perform to the expectations. We will have to go into it seriously,'' Mr. Sethi said.

A contingent of about 280 returned from Islamabad this afternoon and it was given a warm welcome with drums beating endlessly till the last sportsperson drove out of the Indira Gandhi International Airport here.

Pistol shooter Jaspal Rana aptly summed up India's obvious dominance. "In most of the events, especially in shooting, it was a competition within ourselves,'' Rana said. "Others were there but we were a touch better than the rest,'' he added. India won 26 gold medals out of the 30 that were on offer. Swimmer Richa Mishra, who won four individual gold medals, said she was happy with her performance and the timings also. "I am preparing myself for the Olympic Games and I hope to do well,'' said Richa.

For the athletes, chief coach of the team, J.S. Saini spoke. He was "not very happy'' with the performance of the athletes. "I am not saying this based on the medals count, but on the performance of the athletes,'' said Mr. Saini. Despite the fact that the team comprised mainly junior athletes, with the frontline Olympic probables training back home, it could have done better than what it did in Islamabad, he added. "We could have done better in middle distance events, both men and women,'' said Mr. Saini. When it was pointed out that Madhuri Singh had bagged the 800/1500 double, the chief coach said that the timings were ordinary — 2:07-plus and 4:30-plus.

The men fared poorly in the distance events as well. Mr. Saini singled out woman high jumper M. Sangeetha for praise. A personal best of 1.81m that was also a games record, helped Sangeetha, still a junior athlete, win her maiden international title in only her second appearance in a meet abroad. "She went for 1.83 but failed.'' Mr. Saini also mentioned javelin thrower Lijesh Kumar's 75.71m as one of the other performances that came up to expectations.

In javelin too, India had reason for disappointment since Jagdish Bishnoi, who felt that he had a good chance of achieving the Olympic qualifying mark of 77.80m, barely managed to cross 70m. He was a late inclusion in the team.

Only one athlete — Sathi Geetha of the Railways — managed to achieve an Olympic qualifying standard. She clocked a personal best of 52.25s in the 400m as against the standard of 52.30s.

With regard to the overall experience of being in Pakistan, the Chef de Mission said that the very responsive Pakistani people made the whole exercise worthwhile.

Describing one incident that occurred after India rallied to beat Pakistan in the volleyball final, Mr. Sethi said that one Pakistani boy carried India's flag and went around the volleyball arena six times. "Such was the bonhomie that we never felt out of place,'' he added.

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